CHEN3003 Individual Design Portfolio

Task Sheet
RELEASED: Friday September 9th, 5 pm
DUE: EXAM Week 1 - 18th November, 11:59 PM
50% of total grade
100 marks total

Please put your name and student id number on the front page of the report.
Please submit your report as a PDF file, Arial Font, 11 pt, single line spacing.
Please submit your simulation file in the second Turnitin link for the simulation file. ONE simulation file per
person.
PAGE LIMIT: Minimum 15 pages and maximum 30 pages for tasks 1-3. Title pages, table of contents, lists of
figures and tables, reference list and appendices are NOT included in the page limit calculation.
Task: You need to synthesis a process for creating acrylic acid. You will need to create a base case of the
process, showing that you can in principle achieve the desired flowrate and purity required, and then optimize
the system to minimise waste, by-products, energy and cost (or number of units) see below.
1.

Synthesis a base case for producing acrylic acid at a flow rate of 50,000 metric tonnes per year at a
purity of 99.9 mol%. This design should show in principle that you can achieve the flowrate and purity
specifications. This base case does not have to be optimized (ULO 1, 2)
a. Choose a synthesis method to follow and explain why you chose that method: SSL, Smith or
Douglas. [2 marks]
b. Address each step of the synthesis method to synthesise a flowsheet for producing acrylic acid.
You must thoroughly justify the outcome of each step of the synthesis process. [15 marks]
You may use either of the following approaches to support this justification:
i.
Identify heuristics that you have applied, providing references for those heuristics
ii.
Identify and apply algorithmic methods, showing the results of these analyses to support
your design choices
c. Simulate the system after each step in the synthesis process (e.g. after reactions, separations,
etc). Use the results of this simulation to help test your design from part b (based on heuristics or
algorithmic methods) and to explore other design choices as you see fit. Thus, you will come up
with a final design for the process after going through all the synthesis steps and simulating as
you go. You may need to iterate the synthesis process and go back and change earlier parts of the
design to achieve the desired flowrate and purity. [23 marks]
d. After parts a-c for each synthesis step, please provide a PFD of the developing design. MS Visio
can be used for this task, or you can copy and paste directly from your process simulator
environment. [5 marks]

2.

Optimize your process, addressing the following issues any way you consider appropriate, but your
approach must be justified. You may do each of the following steps separately, or doing them
simultaneously in one larger analysis (ULO 2):
a. Demonstrate that you have minimised flowrate of waste and by-product streams AND energy use
in the process. This is a good opportunity to demonstrate debottlenecking techniques to improve
the overall efficiency of the process [20 marks]
b. Discuss the interrelationship between waste/byproduct flow, energy use and cost (CAPEX and
OPEX) for your final design. Justify that your optimized process (from part a) minimises cost
(CAPEX and OPEX). You do not need to calculate the CAPEX and OPEX of your plant (you may if
you wish to), but you must provide a well-reasoned argument that it is minimised. [10 marks]

3.

Critically assess your process simulation to help justify the strength of the synthesised process system.
You can use the process performance analysis techniques and the critical review approach taught in the
semester (ULO 3) [15 marks].

4.

Correct spelling, grammar, in-text referencing and bibliography (Chicago Style) [10 marks]

5.

Appendices: Extra information to support your analysis can appear in an appendix. However, these do
not contribute to the mark.

Information
Acrylic acid (AA) is used as a precursor for a wide variety of chemicals in the polymer and textile industries.
There are several chemical pathways to produce AA, but the most common one is via the partial oxidation of
propylene. A simplified set of three reactions can be used to simulate this process:

Acrylic acid is the main product, with acetic acid as the by-product and carbon dioxide as waste. Partial
pressures are in kPa, and the activation energies and pre-exponential terms for reactions 13 are as follows:

NOTE: You may use the above reaction set, or you may search for your own. When oxidizing hydrocarbons
(propylene) many products are possible.
Specifications:
Acrylic Acid flow rate (product): 50,000 (metric) tonnes/yr
Acrylic Acid purity (in product stream): 99.9 mol %
Assume 8000 operating hours per year.
Construct your simulation using a kmol/hr basis, to give 50,000 tonnes per year.
Constraints and Hints
Azeotropic mixtures are required to be modelled if present.
Binary interaction parameters for VLE data not required (just use the property package to estimate)
Rigorous Columns should be used where possible
Pumps/compressors can be used to increase pressures
Expanders can be used to reuse work in other sections of the process.
CSTR's/PFR (Ideal Reactor Models) can be used singly or in combination to model more complex reactors.
Can use valves to reduce pressure of streams.

Useful References:
Dominic Chwan Yee, Foo, Manan Zainuddin Abdul, Selvan Murugan, and Michael Lynn McGuire. 2005.
"Integrate Process Simulation and Process Synthesis." Chemical Engineering Progress 101 (10):25-29.
Godorr, S. A., D. Hildebrandt, and D. Glasser. 1994. "The attainable region for systems with mixing and
multiple-rate processes: finding optimal reactor structures." The Chemical Engineering Journal and the
Biochemical Engineering Journal 54 (3):175-186. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0923-0467(94)00212-6.
Hildebrandt, Diane, Daniel A. Beneke, Ronald Abbas, Simon T. Holland, Michaela Vrey, and David Glasser.
2010. "Column profile maps as a tool for synthesizing complex column configurations." Computers & Chemical
Engineering 34 (9):1487-1496. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2010.02.006.
Kauchali, Shehzaad, William C. Rooney, Lorenz T. Biegler, David Glasser, and Diane Hildebrandt. 2002. "Linear
programming formulations for attainable region analysis." Chemical Engineering Science 57 (11):2015-2028.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0009-2509(02)00101-X.
Rooney, William C., Brendon P. Hausberger, Lorenz T. Biegler, and David Glasser. 2000. "Convex attainable
region projections for reactor network synthesis." Computers & Chemical Engineering 24 (2):225-229. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0098-1354(00)00518-4.

Journals to Investigate:
Plant Operations Progress
Chemical Technology
AICHE Journal
Hydrocarbon Processing
Chemical Engineering Progress
Encyclopaedias and Textbooks:
Kirk-Othmer Encyclopaedia of Chemical Technology
Encyclopaedia of Chemical Processing and Design
Perry's Chemical Engineering Handbook
Coulson and Richardson's Chemical Engineering Design Vol 6
Chemical process design and integration, Robin Smith (2005)